Fabrics and woven materials used for decorative purposes, such as when worn as clothing or used as drapery, may tend to wrinkle or retain creases through use. Further, when clothing is washed and dried in a conventional dryer or on a clothes line the clothing may take on additional wrinkles and creases from the washing and drying process. The ironing of fabrics is often used to remove such wrinkles and creases by applying heat, and sometimes moisture, to the fabric while pressing the fabric, between substantially flat surfaces. The heat serves to relax the fabric and the pressing between the flat surfaces flattens the fabric to remove the wrinkles and creases.
Ironing can be achieved through a conventional hand-held iron using a flat surface, such as an ironing board, on which the ironing is performed. The ironing may also be achieved by large presses, which are often found in commercial dry-cleaning and laundering establishments. Commercial presses are often very large pieces of machinery, which require large areas of floor space and use considerable energy. An advantage to the hand-held iron is the flexibility with which the operator can iron or press different portions of any particular garment or article being ironed. The relatively small size of the hand-held iron permits the operator to iron around obstacles such as buttons or seams; however, ironing a garment or other fabric item with a hand-held iron can be tedious and time consuming. Commercial presses, on the other hand, allow fast, high-volume pressing of fabrics despite being less discriminate with regard to contours, details, and obstacles of the fabrics being pressed. Some commercial presses are configured to press items of a particular shape, such as a shirt; however, these presses typically are oversized to accommodate the largest of shirts and may still not provide the finer detail ironing possible with hand-held irons.
It may be desirable to have a press that is small enough to be convenient for household use while offering the speed of a commercial press and allow for detail ironing usually achieved only with a hand-held iron.